


Leverage, Season 1, Episode 10, The 12-Step Job

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Leverage
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s01e10 The 12-Step Job, Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 01, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24445399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for the episode and the rest of the series. Complete.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Leverage, Season 1, Episode 10, The 12-Step Job

I’ll be posting The Juror #6 Job at a later time.

Open to Jack Hurley, a recurring character. His character archetype is that of the loveable heavyset doof. How well he fits the loveable part is debatable.

Right now, Jack is being a terrible driver, and this goes from me hating to watch bad drivers to raging at the implication he might be driving under the influence.

Going into an office building, he’s cheerful towards everyone until a woman stops his talking long enough to alert him to men in black in an office with a civilian woman. I’m guessing they’re FBI, but if so, they aren’t wearing FBI jackets.

He runs.

Next up, the woman from the office is talking to Nate and Sophie at Leverage headquarters.

She explains she’s involved with a food bank, Jack presented himself as a money manager, everything he said checked out when she researched him, but it turns out, he fooled her and everyone else at her work. Now, the money she was in charge of is gone, and she’s both feeling guilty for trusting Jack and worried about going to jail.

Promising the latter isn’t going to happen, Nate is kind in firmly telling her this isn’t her fault. “It’s important for you to know that.”

As she’s leaving, delicately bringing up her need to ask due to her experience with she Jack, she inquires, “Why do you do this?”

After a moment, Nate offers, “Same reason you do.”

Once she’s gone, Sophie discovers the can he’s been drinking out of contains alcohol.

Team Leverage is assembled, and Eliot wonders why the client can’t just sue. Nate points out the unlikely-hood of this working. They try to figure out where Jack might be, and Nate is right in his conclusion of Jack and where he likely is, but I don’t know what has made him jump to the conclusion Jack is an addict this soon.

Parker’s sent to break into Jack’s condo, and Eliot and Hardison are sent to go try to find him in on the streets. Hardison angers Eliot by dropping a slushie in Eliot’s car. Eliot’s yelling, however, is interrupted by what looks like Jack being aggressive with either a waitress or stripper.

She goes back inside, and some thugs beat Jack up. A commenter pointed out this was a strip joint, and so, the lack of concern about cops showing up might be more realistic on the thugs' parts than I originally thought. 

Eliot and Hardison step in, and Jack just ups and drives away.

Hardison manages to get a gun, and he shoots out the engine of the thugs’ car. Eliot is impressed until Hardison reveals he was aiming for a thug’s leg, and hearing this, he immediately snatches the gun away from Hardison. Hah!

Though, I feel compelled to repeat again: You never aim a gun at someone unless you are fully prepared to kill them. A leg shot can be fatal. Something other than a leg or car engine can be hit. There’s a chance you could end up hurting someone you care about via friendly fire.

It turns out Jack didn’t get far. He crashed into a pole, and now, he’s asleep. I’m guessing him falling asleep caused the crash, but I’m not sure. Eliot wants to torture him, and Nate has a line implying he believes torture doesn’t work. Also, he doesn’t want kidnapping added to his list of crimes.

Okay, but the plan he comes up with could still technically be considered kidnapping.

Cue Jack waking up in rehab. Nate is his roomie.

Meanwhile, Sophie is a doctor specialising in addiction, and Parker is playing- a kleptomaniac. Heh.

There’s a group therapy session, and Nate and Sophie need to stop working so closely in cons together until they can get some things sorted between them. When Jack gives a list of his addictions, tacos are included.

It is possible for people to be addicted to certain foods, but this is just ‘oh, the heavy character really likes a certain not-so-healthy food’.

Moving on, after the therapy session, if Sophie had been more focused on playing her persona or, at least, coordinating with Parker, this might not have happened, but the head of the facility has antidepressants that are TV antidepressants rather than realistic ones for Parker. She has a line about not doing drugs, and for a TV doctor, he’s a good one; I don’t think he would have forced her if she had completely refused, but he simply explains they’re safe and common.

Well, they are common, and I’m certainly not going to say no one should take antidepressants ever, but there can be severe side-effects. Personally, I disagree with them being prescribed to people with personality and/or mood disorders who aren’t clinically depressed, and Parker’s never shown any sign of clinical depression.

But anyway, Parker takes them.

Elsewhere, Eliot and Hardison have found Jack’s car, except, as they discover after Hardison has gotten into the driver’s seat, it has a bomb attached. Eliot has a line asking if he should kick it that I think is about 90% trying to stop Hardison from going into a panic spiral and 10% genuinely wondering if such a low-tech solution might possibly work.

Hardison figures out what to do, and there’s an Eliot line I don’t like simply because it takes the tension of the scene. It’s funny, but it’s not something real people would be saying if they had less than two minutes.

Eliot’s hands are shown shaking, but he and Hardison manage to diffuse the bomb.

Afterwards, Hardison understandably wants some time to decompress, and Eliot’s unsympathetic. He’s all about the job. In later seasons, he’d be hugging Hardison right now.

More thugs show up, and putting on an accent, Hardison’s all, ‘Jack owes us money, too!’

When this isn’t working, Eliot adds in, ‘Hey, I’ve got a bomb, and I will blow you and this guy next to me up while I get safely underneath a truck if everyone doesn’t back off.’

There will come a time when there will never be a Plan M, and maybe, that time’s already come, but if so, Eliot doesn’t feel inclined to make this clear just yet.

They all leave, and Hardison asks if Eliot planned to drag him along under the truck, too.

“Sure,” Eliot ambiguously agrees.

Back in rehab, Sophie is wearing a latex glove on one hand, but I’m not sure about the other. Nate has started to detox, but he refuses to admit it’s happening.

Eliot and Hardison have arrived, and Eliot is Nate’s brother. He flirts with the receptionist, and I don’t think the poly trio was actually planned at this point. Either that or Kane hadn’t gotten the memo/wasn’t onboard. Hardison claims to be Eliot’s boyfriend, and one, I’m not sure this would work in real life, especially not back in 2008, and two, Eliot’s expression clearly says that, if not for them being in a public place with a witness literally in touching distance, he might react really badly to Hardison doing this.

For all I love the poly trio, I’m honestly not sure if any of the three performers intended it. I know the show’s creator declared via Word of God it was canon, but an argument could be made it’s technically still apocryphal, and the three might have really good agents/publicists that they all listened to when told: Just don’t say anything.

If so, good. I wish more performers would learn how to either be more diplomatic or just simply stay quiet. I don’t expect them to agree with any ship that they don’t like/personally get, but insulting the audience for shipping preferences isn’t a good thing.

There’s a brief meeting between them plus Nate and Sophie, and Nate’s falling apart even more.

Next, in group therapy, Parker is reflecting on her sucky foster parents, and empathetic Jack is bonding with her over this.

For all I sometimes have issues with Parker, Riesgraf is a great actress. Parker is a truly unique character, and Riesgraf always brings her A-game in making Parker feel three-dimensional.

Focusing on Nate, Sophie wants an apology, and as a few episodes later will show, this is rich coming from her. I’m not disagreeing Nate doesn’t owe some people some apologies, but since she doesn’t believe in apologies when it comes to certain things, either, I’m not going to feel much sympathy for her not getting apologies from others.

Over at the strip joint, Hardison and Eliot are talking to the woman they saw with Jack. She informs them Jack wasn’t being aggressive with her; he was trying to get her to accept a car he’d bought for her.

When they leave, there’s some product placement for the car they’re in.

In Leverage headquarters, the future husbands are talking with their future mother-in-law when she gets a call. There’s a moment before she leaves when Eliot says all bad guys know, at least, one stripper, and Hardison counters Eliot knows hundreds of strippers.

“I’m a bad guy,” is the response.

Sophie goes to the rehab centre. Nate tried to break out, and when asked about restraining him, she say no. Instead, she takes him back to his room, and he still refuses to admit he’s addicted.

Meanwhile, Jack is on the phone with an office lady, though, not the client, and it’s revealed thugs dressed as men in black are with her.

Sophie leaves Nate, and he has a hallucination of Sterling. He doesn’t realise it’s one at first, but when he does, he doesn’t seem surprised. Panicked but not surprised.

There’s a scene of him dissociating from everything, and then, he start violently interrogating Jack. He doesn’t get to the level of torture, but it still goes against what he said to Eliot earlier. Jack says his wife left him, he has a big crush on the client of the week, and he took all the food bank’s money in order to greatly increase it.

Intercut with this, the thugs have arrived, and stealing a gun from one of them, Parker alerts Nate to their presence. Then, she makes it clear she’s staying in rehab.

Antidepressants can make people happier and more emotionally open and reflective, but they do not work like this, or at least, they aren’t this fast, especially when taken by people who don’t suffer clinical depression.

Nate doesn’t have time to deal with this. Shooting the window locks, he and Jack leave via it.

Next, Nate calls headquarters, and it’s played as if Jack was convinced to reveal where the money is by Nate giving him tacos. I’d argue it was the bonding they did and the fact Nate literally saved his life, but fine.

Hardison is furious this wasn’t done earlier, see above, and Eliot wants to just turn Jack over to the cops. However, due to the bonding, Nate isn’t going to.

The plan is: Fake Jack’s death in front of the thugs.

Since Jack wasn’t aware of this plan, his trying to get Nate to run away before the car he was in exploded is a sign showing he truly does have a selfless streak. I’d probably be too busy panicking to think of anyone else who was around.

There’s a sweet moment in the flashback before the explosion of Eliot telling Sophie, “Keep your head down, keep your head down,” and bodily shielding her from any potential debris.

Jack reveals the money was hidden in his tires that thankfully didn’t explode.

In the next scene, Jack gives the money to the client, and I love the fact she’s not portrayed badly in anyway for being unreceptive towards him here. For all his heart might have been in the right place, he still did a lot of bad things, including deceiving her, caused her a lot grief, and it was Team Leverage fixing his mess that got her a happy ending.

After she leaves, Team Leverage gives him everything for the new identity they’ve set up for him.

Finally, they go retrieve Parker. Sophie’s persona explains to the head of the centre that Parker needs to be with her own kind, and so, she’s transferring her.

Outside, Parker jumps into Eliot’s arm before hugging Hardison.

Nate says the antidepressants should wear off in about 24 hours.

Incidentally, there’s a proper way to wean a person off of antidepressants, and even so, doing so could come with some serious side-effects that require medical attention, but as established, these are TV drugs.

Parker walks off with her future husbands, and Nate annoys Sophie by declaring he’s ready for a drink. They head to the car, and it looks as if Eliot’s insisting Hardison be the one to sit next to Parker, but dialogue isn’t heard.

Fin.


End file.
